Andrew Carrazzo and Jarrad Waite were both late omissions from the Carlton side which lost to Collingwood on Friday night Photo: Sebastian Costanzo

On Friday night against Collingwood, veteran pair Jarrad Waite and Andrew Carrazzo were both replaced at the last-minute with hamstring and back complaints respectively.

For their part, the Magpies made a couple of changes themselves, leaving out both Nick Maxwell (back) and Clinton Young (calf).

Eight players were omitted in total over the course of round seven, with the most curious case being that of Lions' monolith Jonathan Brown.

Brown was replaced by emergency Mitch Golby prior to Brisbane's clash with Sydney with the official reason given by the Lions being soreness. Many however were not surprised to see the ageing spearhead sit the game out, after triple-premiership coach and now Lions board member Leigh Matthews let it slip late in the week that Brown was likely to be rested.

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Brown was nevertheless named, only to be predictably withdrawn 90 minutes before the first bounce.

Brisbane will not though be facing any sanctions from the AFL for the late omission. The league allows clubs to make changes to selected line-ups so long as replacements come from within the three designated emergencies.

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As a result, penalties are rarely imposed by the AFL for alterations to teams. The last club punished by the league was the Western Bulldogs, who received a $10,000 fine for playing Tom Campbell in place of Ayce Cordy during a match last year, despite Campbell not being listed in the three emergencies.

At the time, AFL football manager Mark Evans indicated that it was necessary to provide a disincentive for clubs to deliberately tamper with their initially selected teams.

"The rules were in place so that no club may gain a tactical advantage over another club around the naming of their side for a particular match," Evans said.

However in light of the raft of changes, and questionable omissions such as that of Brown, it has been argued that the league needs to apply further pressure on clubs to be more transparent at the selection table, especially given the huge sums of money bet weekly on AFL games.

Adam Hamilton from TAB Sportsbet suggested however that bookmakers and punters were in the same boat when it came to late changes.

"We don't have any problem with it," Hamilton said.

"We have a team of AFL betting experts and we don't have any specific people to follow for any late changes. Twitter seems to be a great source of information these days.

Late changes are occurring a similar rate to last season, falling fractionally from 0.60 to 0.57 per game.